Lyons: Gun debate needs dose of reality

Conceived in a dream of reason, what the Internet too often reveals is mass credulousness and fathomless irrationality. According to Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald, a video depicting the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre as a government-sponsored hoax has drawn 8.5 million views on YouTube.

No doubt many viewers were drawn by idle curiosity or sheer incredulity. What would “evidence” for so transparently preposterous an allegation consist of? Nevertheless, there appear to be thousands of True Believers.

Try Googling “Emilie Parker alive” to sample the crazy.

Adepts claim that a photograph of a young girl sitting in President Obama’s lap reveals that 6-year-old Emilie Parker was not murdered along with 19 classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary as reported.

In reality, the child in the photograph is Emilie’s little sister, Madeline.

But why go on? There’s plenty more in the same dogged, delusional vein. Debunk one aspect of the conspiracy, and a dozen absurdities replace it. To anybody capable of imagining that staging the Sandy Hook tragedy would even be possible — requiring, as it would, the active cooperation of half the population of Connecticut — mere evidence and logic are beside the point.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Apart from religion, more Americans appear to be nuts on the subject of guns than all other topics. The National Rifle Association has raised and spent millions in recent years peddling scare stories about President Obama’s secret plan to abolish the Second Amendment, confiscate everybody’s deer rifles and set up a gun-free dictatorship.

Newtown conspiracy theories are only incrementally madder spinoffs of the NRA’s master narrative. Yet its leaders are treated as VIPs in newsrooms and TV studios. Why?

Hence conversations with gun cultists tend to be conducted in the dualistic, all-or-nothing terms of fundamentalist theology. Although polls have shown large majorities of gun owners favor measures such as improved background checks to make it harder for criminals and severely mentally ill people to acquire deadly weapons, cultists see all such legislation in apocalyptic terms.

Hollywood’s equally to blame. About half the emails I get on this topic invoke the “Red Dawn” fantasy, although it’s not foreign communists people imagine taking to the hills to fight, it’s mainly tyrannical U.S. government SWAT teams intent upon seizing their personal arsenals.

I’m tempted to warn these jokers I’ve forwarded their messages to the Obama White House for inclusion on Big Brother’s Hellfire drone strike list, but I’m afraid most wouldn’t get the joke. Tanks, helicopter gunships and drones have put an end to the adolescent fantasy of plucky survivalists taking on U.S. Marines. Everywhere except in movies and at gun shows.

Then there are the “Lethal Weapon”/”Die Hard” revenge comedies I’m partial to myself: the Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Bruce Willis vehicles where a wisecracking hero and his sidekick shoot their way through legions of wicked, heavily armed villains with universally poor marksmanship.

Of course not. Because the working part of your brain understands that these films bear approximately the same relationship to reality as a Roadrunner cartoon. However, deep in our brains lurks the Dirty Harry fantasy. NRA president Wayne LaPierre invoked it during his notorious Newtown press conference. You know, the bit about a good guy with a gun shooting it out with a bad guy with a gun — inside a first-grade classroom.

That’s why the single most useful piece of journalism since Newtown may be Amanda Ripley’s “Your Brain in a Shootout: Guns, Fear and Flawed Instincts.” Writing for Time, Ripley interviewed highly trained, experienced cops and soldiers who talked to her bluntly about the crazy, jagged chaos of armed combat.

“(R)esearch on actual gunfights,” she writes, “the kind that happen not in a politician’s head but in fluorescent-lit stairwells and strip-mall restaurants around America, reveals (that ... Winning a gunfight without shooting innocent people typically requires realistic, expensive training and a special kind of person.”

And normally not the kind of person, oddly enough, who makes an excellent kindergarten teacher.

ADVISORY: Users are solely responsible for opinions they post here and for
following agreed-upon rules of civility. Posts and
comments do not reflect the views of this site. Posts and comments are
automatically checked for inappropriate language, but readers might find some
comments offensive or inaccurate. If you believe a comment violates our rules,
click the "Flag as offensive" link below the comment.

Comment viewing options

Sort Comments

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

According to Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald, a video depicting the Newtown, Conn., elementary school massacre as a government-sponsored hoax has drawn 8.5 million views on YouTube.
With all the conflicting articles inconsistencies in Reporting from AP Reuter ABC NBC etc. who wouldn't arrive at some conclusion that there may be quite a bit more to the CT Story than what exist of it today. Of coarse no one in the Media was rushing to ever say they made a mistake or misreported anything along the way now did they!

Lyons I don't know if research your points or if you just wing it like I do if you research ck out how many child molesting cases have occurred in schools over the past two years vs shootings the shooter takes the life the molester takes the soul and creates how many more monsters as the molested tend to become molesters it could also create shooters think

I questioned the rifle in use several times because the first news I heard said the rifle was in was in the car they want to ban 197 guns wonder how many of mine they want people keep telling me it won't happen same ones told me Obama could not win second term be very careful America

It was a shotgun left in the trunk of the car. If you look at the video it appears to be a shotgun.
The child in the picture that the conspiracy guy did is the younger sister of the child who was killed. There are other pictures on the net that clearly shows the little girl with her dad, the youngest sister and two other children who are relatives with dark hair.

They guy who was found in the woods was a guy who was on his way to the school to help make something with the kids. He heard the shooting and ran, he was cleared of any involvement. There is no grassy knoll.

The Gov. reported to the committee that he has formed that they may never be able to release to the committee the exact medical condition of the freak due to HIPPA privacy laws.

If you want to believe due to the confusion and the minute by mniute reporting of the media that there is some big conspiracy i suppose you can drive yourself nuts looking for boogey men and whatever other crazy thing conspiracy nuts look for but it's pretty clear who died, and who killed them. Maybe it is the need to understand why that makes everybody look for something that isn't there and never was.

Lyons is only saying that the suggestion of the NRA to train and
arm teachers, soccer moms and janitors so that they could stand off a crazed shooter is absurd and unrealistic. Gosh, he did get the peanut gallery going with the conspiracy thing though.

Advancing incentives for schools to hire trained and experienced security guards may not be such a bad idea. The bad idea from the NRA was suggesting that teachers and/or volunteer mommies train and pack.

Then are you saying don't trust the news media because of all the things that might be going on at the time of an incidence? If that is the case then we are all misinformed everyday by the media. Just look at Zimmwrmans case and what was left out by ABC Anus Broad Cast. Splicing out audio and cropting photos to imply the opposite of reality. Who knows about a conspiracy in CT with they way the Media has been discrediting itself over the years. After all who has the most to gain the Theorist or the Media? What ever the case we can't pull a Hillary on this "what difference does it make" as she stated about 4 men in Benghasy right.

Another case of let's put pen to paper before the facts have been checked . Mr Lyons you are wrong ,Wayne La Pierre is not the president of the NRA , he is the executive vice president and ceo of the NRA , the president of the NRA is David Keene , if you are a journalist i suggest you get your facts straight !!! What else in your article can one believe if we find that you did not research the facts ?

It is not that I distrust or consider women or men, those being a teacher or parent not competent to carry a gun. It is only my opinion that security should not be the responsibility of teachers or parents, unless it is a parent who happens to be professionally trained and not working at the school where his/her children attend class. I however (hee, hee) do see your point about some security guards and renta-cops.